


The Sun Will Shine

by ladylapislazuli



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: And also make outs, M/M, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Reconciliation, loki lives
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-13
Updated: 2019-07-13
Packaged: 2020-05-12 16:03:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,665
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19232422
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladylapislazuli/pseuds/ladylapislazuli
Summary: Thor swallowed. Opened his mouth. “I was a ruined man. I lost everyone I loved, and it broke me. A broken man does not make a good king.”Loki stared at him. For the first time in what felt like centuries, he looked… young.- - -After all is said and done, Thor and a newly-resurrected Loki find a way to move forward.





	The Sun Will Shine

**Author's Note:**

  * For [fabaulti](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fabaulti/gifts).



Strictly speaking, Thor didn’t intend to warp the fabric of space and time and bring his brother back from the dead. He’d had his fill of time-warping to last him a lifetime and then some. But then there’d been the incident with a sorcerer, a very literal pull on the strings of fate and – there Loki was.

It was definitely his Loki, too, not Loki from some alternate dimension. He was pretty sure only his Loki would glare at him like that.

“What have you _done_ , you great oaf?” Loki howled, which wasn’t exactly helpful while Thor was mid-way through taking down the eldritch monstrosity that had materialised when Loki did.

It was a good fight, all things considered. Loki didn’t raise so much as a finger to help, and though his glaring was something of a distraction, long years of practice allowed Thor to ignore it. He beat the beast into submission, then finally turned to face his long-lost brother.

Now that the fight was over Loki was right up in Thor’s face, pointing a long, skinny finger at Thor’s nose.

His hand was trembling, Thor realised. Loki was snarling something, but Thor paid him no mind. Loki’s wrists were very thin, and when Thor took a close look at Loki’s face he found him gaunt and… afraid.

Gently, so as not to spook him, he took Loki’s shaking hand in both of his.

Loki went quiet. For a moment, they both stared at their hands.

“What happened, Thor?” Loki said. “What happened to me?”

Thor knew him too well to miss the crack in his voice, the wild look in his eyes. Loki, back from the dead. And if it was a curse or a blessing….only time would tell.

“Come and sit with me, brother,” Thor said, as gentle as he knew how.

“I – you’re _filthy_ ,” Loki complained. But he complied, which told Thor everything he needed to know.

\- - -

As it turned out, Loki hadn’t _forgotten_ anything, per se, it was just something of a leap to go from dead to alive so abruptly. To be fair, things usually worked the other way around.

“So what you’re saying is, I saved you. Yet again.”

“What do you mean _yet again_?” Thor argued. It was astonishing how quickly they fell back into their usual pattern of bickering. “I saved you plenty of times.”

Loki launched into a well-practiced list of times he’d saved the day – the time with the dragon, the time with the frost giants, the time on Sakaar (which – how did he figure he’d helped Thor, exactly?) – and Thor let him.

Neither of them mentioned Thanos. Thor could not, and Loki did not. Thor did not know whether Loki was avoiding the subject for Thor’s sake or his own, but he was grateful.

Even after all this time, he did not know how to talk about it. How even to think about it, in the privacy of his own mind.

Still, something eased in his chest with the knowledge that Loki did not suffer. That his death was instant, so fast he did not even remember it. Thor had seen Loki’s death a thousand times in his dreams, but Loki himself did not feel its pain.

Now, Loki was back. Every bit as difficult and dangerous as he had been, as though no time had passed at all.

“What are you smiling at?” Loki snapped. Thor just shook his head.

\- - -

Learning to live together again was not without its problems.

For one thing, they had not spent so much time in close quarters since Loki had let the Jotun into Thor’s coronation, and that felt like a life-time ago. Then there had been the Chitauri attack on New York, and Thor had discovered the Loki he knew was warped almost beyond recognition. Then Loki had been a prisoner, while Thor remained a prince. Loki had only really returned to him, not the same as he had been but closer to it, just in time for Thanos to kill both Loki and a number of their people.

This time around, it was Thor that had changed.

“You _abdicated_?” Loki said, face drawn into an expression of comical horror.

In answer, Thor shrugged. Loki’s expression morphed quickly into anger.

“Did our father”- _our_ father, so Loki acknowledged it once more – “not tell us we were born to be kings? Have you abandoned your birthright?”

It did not escape Thor’s notice that Loki was asking rather a lot of questions. Loki had not asked Thor so many of him since their childhood, he was sure.

“My birthright is long gone,” Thor said. “I saved and destroyed Asgard in one fell swoop when I brought Ragnarok. I fulfilled my duty as its king. Let someone else raise it from the ashes, and make something new.”

“I suppose you think yourself very poetic,” Loki said. His voice was quiet, but deceptively so. He was white with anger.

“I played my part, Loki. Now it is done.”

“How easy it must be for you to cast it aside. You, the first-born son, Odin’s favourite. I could never be granted the throne, but _you_. It was always yours, yet you throw it away as though it is nothing to you!”

An old argument rearing its ugly head. Once, Thor would have responded in kind, tried to reason with Loki. Instead, he reached out. Gripped Loki’s arm, and the touch seemed to startle Loki, for he fell silent.

Thor swallowed. Opened his mouth. “I was a ruined man. I lost everyone I loved, and it broke me. A broken man does not make a good king.”

Loki stared at him. For the first time in what felt like centuries, he looked… young. Eyes wide, lips parted, searching Thor’s face for reassurance as he had done when they were children.

Thor withdrew his hand. “You spent a lot of time planning my come-uppance.” A mild word, almost comically understated. Both the worst and the best one Thor could choose. “It came to me, though you were not there to enjoy it.”

Loki flinched. His eyes flashed steel. “You have changed, Thor,” he said. “I hardly recognise you.”

Thor was not sure whether he meant it as a jab against Thor’s spirit or changed physique. Knowing Loki, probably both.

“I hardly recognise myself,” he said, turning away from Loki’s surprised expression.

\- - -

Thor had forgotten how bossy Loki could be when he set his mind to it.

“Thor, fetch some water.”

“Thor, bring me some firewood.”

“Thor – why are you still lying about? – get up and do something useful.”

Thor spluttered upright from his sleeping roll. “It’s six in the morning!”

“The sun is up. Get up.”

Thor groaned and flopped back down again, only for Loki to prod him repeatedly with magic until he did as he was bid.

They didn’t talk about it, after that first time. About the changes in Thor. How he was listless, directionless, a shadow of the bold man Loki had known. He was better than he had been, smiled more, told Loki tales of his adventures with Rabbit (though Rabbit had taken one look at Loki and made himself scarce, for which Thor could not blame him). Thor knew he was making progress. Healing, slow as it may have been.

Loki only saw the yawning chasm between the man Loki had known, and who Thor was now.

They didn’t talk about Loki, either. His betrayals, his fickleness, his ultimate act of heroism that led to his death. Still, it was hard not to notice the changes in their relationship. How they fell into an easy (if uncertain) rhythm, more reminiscent of their childhood than any of their relationship as men. Hard not to notice how Loki changed himself to compensate for what Thor now lacked. Took the lead, ordered Thor about. Watched him, sometimes, with a pensive look on his face and a crease to his brow that looked an awful lot like concern.

Neither of them made any mention of going their separate ways. They were together, in an agreement both unspoken and entirely understood. For better or worse, they would stick together. Make… something, of what remained of their relationship.

“Thor, go back to the vendor we saw yesterday – don’t give me that look, you know the one. I want that book after all.”

It was different. Changed. Thor used to take the lead, tell Loki what to do both in play and battle (though Loki rarely obeyed). He was the elder brother, hard-headed and spirited, and Loki followed him wherever he went. Now, they had reversed their roles. Loki ordered, Thor obeyed.

They didn’t talk about it. But Loki told him to go back to a vendor, and Thor went.

\- - -

“You should do something about your beard,” Loki said one morning.

They had only just risen in their shared hotel room. As put-together as he liked to appear, even Loki suffered from bed-head. His hair was completely flat against one side of his skull, and sticking up on the other.

“Says you,” Thor said, gesturing at Loki’s hair. Loki rolled his eyes as though Thor were being obtuse.

He dropped it, but only until he was dressed and ready for the day, hair freshly washed and dried with a burst of magic, slicked back against his head. Shorter now, more like how he used to wear it.

“At least give it a trim,” Loki said.

“Leave it alone, Loki,” Thor said. Harder than he intended, but the implied criticism struck him more than he realised.

Loki had yet to say anything about the changes in his physique, but Thor had seen him looking.

“You look _scruffy_ ,” Loki said. His lip was curled, but his tone… teasing. Thor’s hackles went down. “If you’re going to wear it long, at least braid it properly.”

“It _is_ braided.”

Loki gave him a deeply unimpressed look, and with a sigh Thor went back to the mirror to re-do his braids.

Loki joined him, finishing the last of his morning ablutions. His hip pressed companionably against Thor’s, and every so often their arms would brush.

It was surprisingly domestic, after all they had done to one another. Easy, familiar. And when Thor was done, Loki reached out to adjust his clothing for him, eyes rolled to the heavens at the half-popped collar and missing button on Thor’s shirt, but hands warm and sure.

It was everything Thor thought he had lost when he lost his family, and yet not the same. He and Loki were different now. Their closeness… different.

When Thor met Loki’s eyes, Loki looked right back.

\- - -

“I always envied your wit,” Thor told Loki one night. “I could never keep up when you and mother were talking about theories. And I could never make her laugh like you could.”

They were seated by a camp-fire. It was a beautiful evening, the night sky clear and starry, the breeze mild and almost hypnotic. So when the words came to Thor’s lips, he did not stop them.

For a moment, Loki was silent, the confession left to hang in the air. An offer, though of what Thor could not name.

Loki exhaled, slow and heavy. “You understood father better than I ever did, I think.”

Thor’s first impulse was to say _no_ , because Loki was the one with all the cleverness, Loki the one who could trick and wheedle his way out of trouble while Thor could only shout defiance, but Thor stopped himself. Thought.

Loki could weave a web of words like no one else. Had learned it from Odin, and as such neither of them could ever speak plainly to one another. They riddled, and mislead, and obfuscated.

Thor never did. When their talk grew too intricate he let the words wash over him, and looked for the intent hidden beneath. He did it with Odin, focused not on the words of wisdom but on the hand clasped on his shoulder, loving and guiding. He did it too with Loki, unperturbed by the sharpness of his tongue, listening only to the way Loki leaned in when Thor put an arm around his shoulders.

He was not perfect. He had stopped listening, and drove Loki away from him. But he thought he understood what Loki meant.

“You are right,” Thor said. “You were always too clever for your own good, both you and Father. I am cut from simpler cloth.”

“A hammer, rather than a knife,” Loki said. “Oblivious to the finer details.”

Thor could not tell whether Loki was amused, or angry, or both.

Tonight was a night of truths, it seemed. He took another breath, and spoke.

“I always loved you. I know I was not always the best brother, but…”

He felt more than heard the way Loki’s breath caught. There was a world between those words, but he could not find the right ones. He could only hope they would be understood as he meant them. Loki had wronged him, true enough, but Thor had wronged him just the same.

“I was not the best,” he said again, “but I loved you.”

The trees rustled overhead. Somewhere in the distant night a bird cried.

Thor did not look at Loki across the fire. He stared into the flames, hands clenched in his lap. Waiting.

“I know,” Loki said at last. Hoarse, as though the words had been forced from him. A revelation in and of themselves. “I know you did.”

Thor smiled. And when he went to sleep that night, he did not dream of death.

\- - -

“You’re making a mess of that,” Loki said.

Thor ignored him, struggling to get his hair back from his face. It was not his neatest braid, to be sure, but it would do.

“Stop harping, Loki,” he said, irritated.

He had been irritable since that night by the fire. Tense, restless. Something had shifted between them, a chapter closed. Loki had been different, and the last dregs of the resentment and mistrust between them had been purged.

They were starting something new, and Thor did not know where it would lead. He felt off-balance.

He startled when he felt Loki’s hands covered his own, stilling them.

“Let me do it,” Loki said, his exasperation at odds with the gentle way he undid Thor’s braids and started again.

Every so often, his fingers would brush against the skin of Thor’s face. And Thor still did not know why he felt so restless, but he closed his eyes and leaned into them all the same.

When Loki was done, Thor caught their reflections in the mirror. His thick hair and beard covering the majority of his face, Loki still thin but clear-eyed, lips quirked into a smile that, for once, did not seem to be at Thor’s expense.

“You really are hopeless,” Loki said, and Thor did not think he spoke only of the braids.

He did not resist when one of Loki’s fine fingers tilted his head around. He followed, willing and easy, as he had not been since he was a babe.

“Thor,” Loki said, then stopped. His hand was shaking, and Thor reached without thinking to take it in his own. Wondering why Loki looked nervous all of a sudden.

Then Loki leaned forward and kissed him, and Thor understood.

Loki pulled away, sliding his hand from Thor’s grasp. Setting it in his own lap and staring at it as though it held any answers.

Thor studied the top of his dark head, something easing in his chest. That was what he had been waiting for. Why he felt restless, and did not understand why.

But things were different now. He did not need to understand, just wait for Loki to take the lead. Thor had led for long enough.

He reached out, placing his hand back over Loki’s. Accepted.

The second time, when Loki leaned in, he did not pull away so quickly.


End file.
